Re: AW: this affects DotGNU (was: this doesn't affect DotGNU (was Re:[DotGNU]New addendum for MS redistributables))

[Barry Fitzgerald]

On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Rhys Weatherley wrote:

>
> We should try approaching language research groups at
> universities.  Portable.NET is an obvious platform for
> performing language integration, JIT research, and multi-
> bytecode VM development.  I've been touting it as such
> in the presentations I've been giving lately.  Perhaps we
> can counter this push by MS by offering our own Free
> research platform.
>
> Rotor will probably be dead on arrival outside the research
> community.  From what I've been able to glean, it is designed
> to be ECMA-compatible.  Which makes it highly unlikely
> that it will run VS.NET stuff out of the box (which requires
> the .NET Framework SDK classes).
>
> There's really no incentive for MS to turn Rotor into a
> real system that can run arbitrary .NET applications.
> For example, if Rotor on FreeBSD ever became capable
> of running ASP.NET, then it would be a threat to
> Windows NT server sales.  The MS marketing
> department will shoot that in the head real quick.
>

It's also a way for MS to recruit unsuspecting students to their platform
and not give them proper tools to develop.  The student learns the base
language, is poluted by the shared source license (by accepting it) and
then released into the work world where they have to use their skill with
MS' tools because even the question that they modified Free source code
that's not under the shared source license, scares the bejeezes out of them.

        -Barry